Nguyen Quoc Hung, chairman of LogiGear, said Vietnam this year had ranked eighth in the list of top ten destinations for software testing by the British A.T. Kearney Consultancy Group, and had remained on this list for four consecutive years.

Hung was speaking at the Vietnam International Software Testing and Automation Conference (VISTACON) 2011, which concluded in HCMC on Wednesday.

The local software testing market has achieved strong growth, with an annual growth rate of 17% and market value at US$9 billion, Hung said. Currently, Vietnam is holding a significant market share since local software firms have secured multiple testing contracts with customers in Japan and North America.    

Harry Robinson, principal software design engineer at Test Microsoft, pointed out the strengths of Vietnam in software testing and automation, and the advantages in low-cost skillful labor, fast infrastructure development, safe investment environment and low ratio of personnel changes.

According to IT experts, Vietnam has to compete vigorously with India and China due to limited human resources. In Vietnam, the average ratio of software design engineers in testing to programmers is 1:5, while the international standard is 1:3.

Therefore, Hung of LogiGear said the country needed to prove that it has the capability to undertake large projects that foreign customers are seeking.

According to the Department of Information Technology of the Ministry of Information and Communications, the local software industry, including software testing, recorded an average growth rate of 29% annually over the past years. Last year, the industry brought in over US$1 billion in revenue, with some 35% sourced from outsourcing services.

Speaking at VISTACON, Nguyen Trong Duong, head of this department, expected the software industry this year would generate the same revenue of US$1 billion as last year.